It was through this Tumblr that E! producers and casting
directors found Dorothy Wang, the 26-year-old "funemployed"
heiress to her father's $4 billion retail real estate
fortune. Dorothy's dad, Roger Wang, founded the Golden
Eagle International Group in Nanjing and turned it into one of
the country's largest mall chains, with stores in 15
cities, according to Forbes.

"When Rich Kids Of Instagram
launched, I was one of the main people they featured on the
site," Wang told Business Insider over the phone as she was
sitting in L.A. traffic. "I was one of the first people they put
on the Tumblr and then they kept putting me on it. So I was
approached after producers at the network saw me on the Tumblr
page and from there they asked me, 'Would you ever want to do a
reality show?' and I responded, 'Honestly, I thought I was living
a reality show the last seven years of my life. Thank God cameras
are going to be there so I’m not just posing into thin air for
myself.'"

Casting Dorothy — who says
she had no idea of her family's wealth "until it was printed in
Forbes" despite her collection of $10,000 Hermés Birkin bags so
large she "lost count"— was easy, but E! needed a whole cast
of people just as outgoing and unabashedly outrageous as the
self-described "fabuluxe" University of Southern California
graduate.

"We went through the process of like, 'Who’s in your life? Do you
have any friends who are really outgoing?'" Dorothy explains of
the reality show casting process. "I immediately thought of my
friend Morgan Stewart. Morgan and I literally used to have
pow-wows together after spin class being like, 'We’re meant to be
on TV! We know it’s going to happen.' And then one day it
did. I went in, we brought in other relevant people in
our lives... It was called 'The Morgan and
Dorothy Project' for the longest time."

In order to round out the cast, Dorothy says, "There wasn’t an open call or a casting for
the show at all. They wanted Morgan and I to do a show so we
brought in our friends and they picked the ones who are on the
show now. So, all of these people who are coming out of the
woodwork saying they auditioned for the show, I’m like, 'I was
there, that’s not what happened.'"

As with any reality show, the cast has conflicts with each
other, but it's clear these friendships are real and have history
that goes back further than when the cameras started rolling last
year. The on-air conflicts haven't been enough to tear the group
apart just yet.

"I think we’ve all gotten a lot closer because it’s such a
unique experience that has really taken over our lives and
is our lives at the same time," explains Dorothy. "I
have a lot of friends outside of the show, but sometimes I don’t
want to put them through an hour of me talking about the show so
I just hang out with Morgan and Roxy so we can talk about what’s
going on."

While Dorothy was on board to showcase her life for the public,
adjusting to people's hateful comments online has taken some
getting used to.

"I spent the first two weeks before and after the first episode
aired basically crying and having anxiety attacks because it was
so new to me," Dorothy admits. "But once the show progressed, we
really saw a shift. People were like, 'Wait, we actually don’t
hate you, we like you. You’re not annoying anymore.'"

Before the show aired, Dorothy had 26,000 followers on
Instagram. Today she has 561,000 followers and counting, as
well as a new outlook on
her haters.

"Now when I do read the comments, I laugh at them," she says.
"It’s crazy stuff like a person wanting to stab me in a back
alley with a turkey leg. Sometimes they say the funniest things,
we literally just read them out loud to each other. It’s funny to
us now. I think we’ve all developed a much thicker skin."

So what does Dorothy's influential dad think about his daughter's
newfound reality show fame?

"I literally waited until we had to sign our contracts to
tell my family ... but when I told my dad he
was the most supportive. He said, ‘I would never do it, but for
someone like you, I think it’s something you will enjoy and be
good at, and it’s something you can do a lot of things with. You
have an interesting story to tell. Yes, you’re a rich
kid, but you are also so much more and this would allow you to
show that to the world.'"